作者：祈士真 Casey, John J.
LUTHER AND CATHOLIC CHURCH ORDER
INTRODUCTION
The year 1983 marks the five-hundreth anniversary of the birth of Martin Luther the Augustinian priest who became an outstanding religious figure in that sixteenth-century movement known as the Protestant Reformation. So great was Luther's influence that his thought remains very much a living part of our world today. Sizeable numbers of Christians who call themselves Evangelicals trace their inspiration back to this heritage.
Traditionally Catholics have considered the basic point of departure in Luther's teaching to be his doctrine of justification and faith. This is not surprising since Cardinal Cajetan who was sent by Pope Leo X to meet Luther at Augsburg, made note of the fact that he thought this doctrine as it stood would indeed institute a new church. It would, he thought, take a lot of discussion to round it out into Catholic teaching. But Rome had a prior concern and it was this concern that Cajetan was to present to Luther first, namely the authority of the Roman Pontiff. Luther refused to consider this first and some historians say the reason was Luther's suspicion that he was being used as a pawn in papal politics. Whatever the reason, from that point on efforts at reconciliation between Catholic and reform positions met with little success.
At the present time a vastly changed world has replaced that of the sixteenth century and Catholic-Lutheran ecumenical dialogue may be looked upon as the contemporary Cajetan-Luther discussions. Without going into detail, it is interesting to note that in the dialogue on doctrine great strides have been made in resolving the differences that exist between the two traditions. Perhaps this is not surprising because from the very start Lutherans thought their doctrine was indeed the traditional Catholic faith. They saw what they were doing as simply pruning away nonessentials that had become attached to essential Catholic doctrine. Present-day dialogue usually begins from this position and seeks to clarify the basic common faith that stands beneath any particular theological expression of that faith. At the same time, the dialogue takes a second look at some of the so-called nonessentials of the sixteenth century to see whether these may have been misunderstandings rather than points of actual contention. Results of these common doctrinal dialogues have been published both in Europe and in the United States.
Although dialogue on Church authority remains a difficult ecumenical issue, it provides an interesting perspective for Catholic theologians to reflect upon the tradition of authority as it developed in the Catholic Church. It is well to note at the beginning that we are talking about here is not ministry but rather Church order. The discussion on ministry in the Catholic-Lutheran dialogue basically has been part of the doctrinal reflection. Within that context it concerns certain Christians rightly carrying out the various function that exist within the Christian community on behalf of the whole community and its individual members. Church order, on the other hand, concerns the place or position that members of the Christian community have within that community and whereby they are related to and distinguished from one another. It was on the question of Church order that Luther's thought offered a different perspective that has had its effect on more recent Catholic thinking. What this paper will do in broad outline, then, is place the thinking of Luther on Church order within the context of the development of Catholic thought.
THE CATHOLIC TRADITION OF CHURCH ORDER
Within each Catholic community of the baptized, in actual practice distinctions among members rest in the position each has in relation to the sacraments. This springs from the principle that the basic community activities are the sacraments and of all the requirements involved in the valid celebration of a sacrament, the primary one is that of requisite power on the part of the person actually celebrating that sacrament. All other requirements involved in the celebration of a sacrament are predicated on the existence of a minister who has the requisite power to celebrate that sacrament. Should an empowered minister be lacking, a sacrament cannot be celebrated.
For the majority of the sacraments, the minister receives his power through the reception of one of the sacraments themselves, namely Holy Orders. This celebration has been recognized throughout the history of the Church without serious dissent as a function belonging to the office of bishop which in turn is transmitted through the reception of this sacrament. In the Catholic tradition this is the principle behind the belief in the apostolicity of the Church whereby each bishop can trace his line of ordination back to the apostles themselves who were directly empowered by Christ. Thus it is commonly held that once the chain of sacramental contact back to the apostles is broken, requisite power for the majority of the sacraments ceases to exist.
Among all the sacraments celebrated for the Catholic community of the baptized, the greatest is the Eucharist and the community member having power over the Eucharist is the priest. But priesthood is common to both bishop and presbyter so that both by ordination have equal authority over the Eucharist. But a potentially confusing situation in Church order is saved by the fact that only the bishop has authority over the sacrament of Holy Orders and in principle it is by this authority that Eucharistic ministers are provided. Thus although the presbyter has equal control over the greatest of the sacraments, nevertheless it is only through the bishop alone that the Church continues the Eucharist from generation to generation. Thus the bishop is easily distinguished as superior to the presbyter since the presbyterate depends upon the episcopate for its continuance. In turn both of these are easily distinguished as superior to the ordinary members of the Catholic community since they must depend upon the bishop and the presbyter for the Eucharist without which they would not be spiritually alive.
The primacy of control over the sacraments in Catholic Church order can be seen in a negative way in the order of deacon. Although the order of deacon was one of the three original offices in the Catholic tradition, it virtually disappeared for centuries. And the disappearance began once it was clearly decided by the Church that the deacon had no share in the priestly office. The Second Vatican Council has resurrected this office but it still remains virtually indistinguishable from lay ministry, the post-Vatican II replacement for minor orders.
Within the universal Catholic community of the baptized in contradistinction to each local community, Church order recognizes the highest position of all as the office of pope or Supreme Pontiff. Although it is the highest office in the Church it has always been the least secure. A primary reason is that the office of pope is not marked by any special sacramental control peculiar to itself. Thus the pope being essentially a bishop, enjoys no special advantage over any other bishop in the sacramental line that would clearly mark him as superior. For this reason at various times throughout the history of the Church his superiority has been questioned on these very grounds. Now when Saint Jerome asked the question "What can a bishop do that a presbyter cannot do," he answered it in the very next words of his question "except ordain?" This was sufficient in time to position a clearly established difference between presbyter and bishop. But when the same question was asked about the relationship between pope and bishop, the answer came to rest upon a power of jurisdiction.
The problem of jurisdiction has existed in the Church from its earliest days. The principle behind it was that Church order in practice existed within the call to service of a local Church or, as it was called in the very early days, a parish. In time each local parish had its bishop, its presbyters and its deacons and difficulty arose when a bishop or a presbyter attempted to administer a sacrament outside his own Church－that is within the parish of another bishop without that bishop's permission. Particularly distressing was the dispensation of the sacrament of Holy Orders outside one's jurisdiction.
Such jurisdictional questions which are so frequently mentioned in early councils came to be thematized under the categories of validity and lawfulness, categories borrowed from the Roman legal system. It could not be denied that bishops had the requisite power to ordain for that would be to destroy the intrinsic power of the very office of bishop itself. But should he ordain outside his own Church, he would be doing so unlawfully or illicity and the one ordained could be denied the lawful and licit practice of his office. Likewise it could not be denied that the presbyter had the requisite power to confect the Eucharist; but should he do so outside his own jurisdiction he could be doing it unlawfully.
But the sacramental system was not the only focus of jurisdiction. A second and very important focus concerned the question of who would preside among bishops in a given area. The bishops of apostolic or apostle-founded Churches were recognized as holding first rank and among these none shared the same prestige as the bishop of the Church at Rome with its two apostles Peter and Paul. But such prestige alone did not sustain the weight of a growing papal claim to the highest hierarchical position in the Church.
The medieval Church wedded jurisdiction and sacrament together as two sides of the same coin. While on the one hand power over the sacraments within the Catholic community of the baptized came from Holy Orders, this was not necessarily a complete power that allowed indiscriminate confecting of the sacraments. What was also necessary was a legitimate call to office in the CURA ANIMARUM. This distinction although in the same vein as the earlier one of lawfulness and liceity, was more sophisticated because in some cases it concerned validity. It did not, however, lessen sacramental power already traditionally attached to the offices of bishop and presbyter; rather it centered around powers attached to authority in the Church, namely the power of the keys. Thus the verticle line of authorization under the power of the keys started with the pope who in turn initially authorized bishops who in turn authorized presbyters.(1)
However the power of the keys still did not give the papacy a firm base in relation to other bishops largely because in Scripture the power of the keys was presented to all of the apostles as well as to Peter. Thus to position bishops in a vertical hierarchical scheme under the pope was never really established until the First Vatican Council in 1870. And that was a development well after the Reformation.
Church order as it has been described thus far has been within the Catholic community of the already baptized. But the basis of Church order rests upon the sacrament of Baptism; or to be more precise. Baptism is the sacramental base on which the whole structure of Church order rests. Now while one might get the impression from what has been expounded up to the present that Church order in the Catholic tradition is the result of ordinary sociological laws at work in an organization heavily influenced by Roman social structures in the first instance, medieval feudalism in the second and renaissance divine right of kings in the third, these laws alone could not account for the peculiarly Christian position concerning the minister of Baptism.
There is no written indication at all that there was any explicit consciousness in the early days of the Church of an unrestricted empowerment for the administration of the sacrament of Baptism. In the early Churches or parishes, Baptism was a community celebration administered by the bishop together with his presbyters and deacons and for that matter the whole community. Questions as to whether Baptism by others than community ministers would be valid first arose in the case of Baptism by heretics. What the early Church meant by heretics were basically Churches or parishes that were fully established with bishop, presbyters and deacons but because of a doctrinal or disciplinary dispute, were Churches in competition with those which held the Catholic faith and practice. The question arose that when someone from an heretical Church entered a Catholic Church, would he have to be rebaptized? After a certain amount of dispute, the Catholic Church decided that given the proper administration of the sacrament－that is, with the trinitarian formula during the washing－heretics were indeed baptized and only the anointing (the sacrament of Confirmation) was necessary for such people entering a local church. At the same time the validity of orders of such heretical churches was usually not accepted, so implicitly it had to be held that people outside the traditional ministry of bishop, presbyter and deacon could indeed baptize.
It is not surprising that as a corollary of this question concerning the validity of Baptism celebrated by heretics, the added question should eventually arise as to the validity of Baptism celebrated by non-Christians. The answer to this question was side-stepped by Augustine in his work CONTRA EPISTOLAM PAKMENIANI, Book II. Said Augustine: "This is indeed another question, whether Baptism can be given even by those who were never Christians. Nor should anything be rashly asserted on this question without the authority of a sacred council equal to such an important question."(2) By Augustine's time, then, it was not a settled question and even he did not presume to give an answer on his own authority.
After the patristic period, as we enter the period of the middle ages, the problem seemed to reach the stage where it demanded an answer. When that answer came it was a clear one from a letter of Pope Nicholas I in November of the year 866. In the letter he told a group of bishops that all else being proper, whether the person baptizing is Jew, Christian or pagan, those receiving such baptism are indeed baptized.(3) So from the period of Augustine's quoted work (398) to Pope Nicholas' reply in 866, the question had been clearly resolved. The teaching of the Church was that indeed anyone was empowered to confer the sacrament of Baptism.
Saint Thomas Aquinas writing in the thirteenth century and probably around the year 1270, stated in the third part of the SUMMA THEOLOGIAE that just as any water at all is sufficient from the point of view of the matter of the sacrament of Baptism, so any man－even a non-believer or non-baptized person－is competent and can baptize in case of necessity. He goes on to say that the one who baptizes ministers only outwardly whereas it is Christ who baptizes inwardly and he can use any man in whatever way he wishes. The unbaptized person even though he does not belong to the Church in reality or in sacrament can belong to the Church in intention and likeness of action in so far as he intends to do what the Church does and he observes the form of the Church in baptizing. In this way he works as a minister of Christ. The reason for this, of course, is the necessity of Baptism, a necessity which Aquinas though the other sacraments do not have.(4)
The clearest statement that the teaching authority of the Church itself has made, was given at the Council of Florence which met from 1438 to 1445. This was a reunion council and in it an instruction to the Armenians was formulated which contained the following teaching on Baptism. "The minister of this sacrament is the priest, whose office it is to baptize (ex officio). But in case of necessity, not only a priest or deacon but a lay man or woman, in fact even a pagan and a heretic can baptize, so long as he observes the Church's form and intends to do what the Church does."(5) With this statement the Catholic tradition of the minister of the sacrament of Baptism reached its present maturity.
It is interesting to note that in Catholic thinking just as being in traditional metaphysics is considered the perfection of perfections because it is the ground that makes all other perfections possible, so Baptism is truely the sacrament of sacraments because without it no other sacrament is possible. In fact the Catholic community of the baptized which is the locus of all the other sacraments exists only by virtue of Baptism. Thus in a Church order that is based on authority over the sacraments, the empowered minister of Baptism poses a peculiar problem because everyone is equally empowered in Baptism within the Church community. Such a situation without an adequate theology behind it could easily cause the whole Church order structure to collapse in upon itself. In a limited sense this is what happened in the reformation thought of Luther.
1)The Council of Florence gave the clearest exposition of this vertical hierarchical line.
2)Cf. Sancti Aurelii Augustini, OPERA OMNIA Vol. IX (Parisiis: Apud Gaume Fratres, Bibiopulas, 1837), p. 107.
3)Cf. ENCHIRIDION SYMBOLORUM, No. 335.
4)Cf. Q. 67 Art. 5 in Thomas Aquinas, SUMMA THEOLOGIAE, Vol.57 (New York: McGraw Hill, 1975), pp. 66-69.
5)Cf. Paul F. Palmer (ed.), SOURCES OF CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY VOL I: SACRAMENTS AND WORSHIP (Westminster, The Newman Press, 1963), p. 99.
LUTHER'S POSITION
Up through the time of Martin Luther, the basic theology behind Church order as it had developed in the West depended upon a theological work believed to have been written by Dionysius the Areopagite in the first century of the Christian era. Since the author in the work claimed he was baptized by Saint Paul, this writing roughly held the same position in medieval theological thinking that the early second century letters of Saint Ignatius of Antioch hold today in Vatican II thinking on Church order. The work consisted of four treatises, the second of which concerned the ecclesiastical hierarchy. In this treatise a mystical explanation was given to Church order in the verticle line. In effect it tended to soften the power-over-the-sacraments base while establishing a divine order in symbolism that was spiritually fruitful. Even though it is now known that this writing is a fifth-century forgery, nevertheless at that time it presented an adequate theological base for Church order.
During the humanistic revival of the fifteenth century with its emphasis on language study which included taking a fresh look at Scripture through the medium of the original languages in which the books of the Bible were written, the neoplatonic and non-scriptural character of the pseudo-Dionysian writings began to pale. Fresh insights into any theological question were now coming from the Scriptures themselves and it was into this scene that Martin Luther came.
Luther looked on existing Church order as kind of a tyranny contrary to the freedom of the Christian which he found so often expressed in the Epistles of Saint Paul. As he saw it, this tyrannical Church order consisted of two kinds of baptized members, the ordained baptized and the simply baptized. The former group although the smaller exercised enormous control over the latter which was the much larger group. Their control of Church order created a class society within the Church that might be graphically expressed as ORDAINED-baptized and baptized whereas according to Scripture Christians are BAPTIZED with some being BAPTIZED-ordained. Thus it was Baptism that gave every Christian his unique identity and status; any addendum was simply a community function extending from one's Baptism.
As for priesthood, it is through Baptism that the Christian enters this exalted state. Should one ask how those specifically called priests in the Church differ from those called lay people, Luther's answer was that the name "priest" was unjustly transferred from the many to a few thus causing an improper distinction among Christians that Scripture itself does not make. Those who have appropriated the name ''priest" to themselves are actually called "minister," "servants" and "stewards" in Scripture. Thus there is no vertical hierarchical arrangement of divine origin in the Christian community; rather there is, a horizontal added condition of service some members of the community have. Luther explained it thus: "Although we are all equally priests, we cannot all publically minister and teach. We ought not to do so even if we could."(6)
The evil of the old hierarchical Church order which saw some in the community usurping the rights of all, could be seen in several practices the most blatant of which were the denial of the cup to the laity and the imposing of obligations on the laity without their consent. In the denial of the cup to the laity, priests are claiming a dictatorship for themselves which they do not have. Since by the teaching of Scripture they are actually servants, it should be their duty to administer the body and blood of Christ under both species to those who desire it and whenever they desire it. As to the imposing of obligations on Christians, once again this is an aberration of the hierarchical class system. Luther believed that no one－pope, bishop or anyone else－had the right to impose any special obligation on a Christian without that Christian's consent. In short, within the community of the baptised, no relationship exists among Christians where one has authority over another.(7)
Luther and his followers were accused of attempting to get rid of the existing Church order by abolishing bishops. And indeed from what has been said above such a move would easily attain its desired goal. But in the Augsburg Confession, Philip Melanchthon claims that Lutherans did not wish to abolish the traditional office of bishop which had existed for so many centuries in the Church but rather wished to abolish what we might term prelates. Bishop is a ministry term which appears many times in Scripture whereas a term like prelate which is commonly used in the Catholic Church as a substitute for bishop, is a description of rank not taken from Scripture but rather from secular practice whereby someone is designated as superior to others. In actual practice this would mean the abolition of the relationship within the Church community based on control over the sacraments. The first casualty among the sacraments within such a change was Holy Orders. This could no longer be a sacrament because if it remained so, then by divine institution it would continue to produce a special group within the Christian community of the baptised, independent of community control. Such a group of its very nature would preside in the Christian community. The alternative was the Christian community as a whole having control over the sacraments by being the instrument through which one was rightly called to sacramental ministry.
6)Cf. Luther's "The Freedom of a Christian" in John Dillenberger, MARTIN LUTHER: SELECTIONS FROM HIS WRITINGS (New York: Snchor Books, 1961).
7)Cf. Luther's "The Pagan Servitude of the Church", ibid.
THE CATHOLIC ADJUSTMENT
The position of Martin Luther and his followers produced a positive and a negative effect on the Council of Trent's deliberations on Church order. In the positive vein, the Council firmly upheld a Church order which was grounded in control over the sacraments within the Catholic community of the baptized where the most important sacrament celebrated was the Eucharist and the key to the Eucharist was the sacrament of Holy Orders. In the negative vein the Council stepped away from the issue of the relationship between pope and bishops－the power of the keys－and left that controversial issue raised by the reformers hanging. For three hundred years this issue matured in the context of European political and social change until it was finally settled at the First Vatican Council in 1870. At this Council it became Catholic doctrine that the pope is the infallible head of the Church and his primacy is that of universal episcopal jurisdiction. The principle invoked was that these perogatives of the papacy are implicitly contained in the very concept of primacy in the Church. Once this was settled, the basic questions raised by Martin Luther concerning Church order could be addressed.
The most important question was the universal priesthood of all the baptized and how this coincided with the special hierarchical priesthood. A second question following from this was the very nature of sacramental control within the Church－what its role and function was and how it differentiated Christians within the Catholic community of the baptized. And finally, given the fact that anyone can have control over the sacrament of Baptism the very base on which the whole structure of Church order stands, what would be an adequate theology for ensuring that the whole structure would be less vulnerable to internal collapse.
The Second Vatican Council took up the problem of the universal priesthood of the baptized and its relationship to the hierarchical priesthood within the Church. In speaking of these two priesthoods, LUMEN GENTIUM, the Council's dogmatic constitution on the Church, states the following:
"Although they differ essentially and not only in degree, the common priesthood of the faithful and the ministerial hierarchical priesthood are none the less ordained one to another; each in its own way shares in the one priesthood of Christ. The ministerial priest by the sacred power that he has, forms and rules the priestly people; in the person of Christ he effects the Eucharistic sacrifice and offers it to God in the name of all the people. The faithful, indeed, by virtue of their royal priesthood, participate in the offering of the Eucharist. They exercise the priesthood too by the reception of the sacraments, prayer and thanksgiving, the witness of a holy life, abnegation and active charity." (No. 10)
What this statement of the Second Vatical Council has done is to make it proper now to speak of priesthood in the Church in two ways, the priesthood of the baptized and the priesthood of the ordained. These priesthoods are essentially different but complementary. The essential difference in a general way is seen in the exercise of these two priesthoods. One－the ordained priesthood－is an active priesthood which can effect and offer the Eucharistic sacrifice whereas the other－the priesthood of all the baptized－is more of a passive priesthood whereby one is disposed to receive the effects of the active priesthood and all that this signifies., The principle of the relationship between the two is still one of control over the sacraments, principally the Eucharist, but the control is mutual because basically one priesthood cannot do without the other. The ordained priest, since he offers in the name of the baptized priests, is dependent upon their existence and the baptized priests are dependent in turn upon the leadership of ordained priests for the exercise of their particular priestly charism. Thus there is an essential not just an accidental relationship of one to the other.
The Council also expressed the Scriptural basis of both priesthoods. The priesthood of the baptized is explicitly mentioned in Scripture while the ordained priesthood is not. However for the baptized priesthood no special role is mentioned in Apoc. 1:6 and no clear role in 1 Pet. 2:9-10. Nevertheless the right to the title is there. Whence comes the right for bishops and presbyters to call themselves priests over and above their baptized priesthood? The Council indicates that they have the right to the title because they act in the person of Christ in their Eucharistic ministry. And since Christ is THE PRIEST in Scripture－particularly in the Epistle to the Hebrews－the ministers who act in His name have the right to the title "priests" in a special way even though Scripture does not specifically call them such.
As for the very nature of sacramental control within the Church and how it differentiates, the Council enunciated a very clear and precise principle in its decree on the liturgy. The liturgy which is primarily the celebration of the sacraments and in particular the Eucharist, is seen as the action of Christ the priest and of His body which is the Church. Thus the liturgy is the exercise of the priestly office of Jesus Christ in which full public worship is performed by the mystical body of Jesus Christ－that is, by the head and His members. The ordained priest, then, has power over the sacraments only as a vicar, a stand-in as it were for Jesus Himself. Thus sacramental control differentiates members in the Church primarily by designating those who represent Christ at the most solemn functions that He has given His Church to perform.
As for Baptism, nowhere is the primary action of Christ more clearly seen and the secondary role of His ministers more clearly indicated than in this Sacrament. "By His power He is present in the sacraments so that when anyone baptizes it is really Christ Himself who baptizes." The Church, then, is one body and whenever it acts it always acts together with its head. But in the world of external signs when the head has need anyone can stand in for Christ because in the reality of the sacrament itself it is Christ who acts. Men then are primarily His ministers, His servants, His stewards, as He sanctifies the priestly people.
It is interesting to note that the Church has accepted Luther's concerns as valid starting points but from these starting points has reached rather different conclusions. The baptized are indeed priests but priesthood in the Church is not to be understood through the priesthood of the faithful but rather all priesthood in the Church is to be understood through the priesthood of Christ. Power over the sacraments does indeed differentiate the members of the Christian community of the baptized and is grounded in the Scriptural concept of minister, servant and steward but this ministry, service and stewardship is given to Christ as He sanctifies the members of the Christian community. Finally, human control over the sacraments while necessary is most graphically illustrated by Baptism as simply a secondary role. Since Christ Himself plays the primary role, one need not fear that Church order based on control over the sacraments is in any danger of collapsing in upon itself.
There are those who say that everything contained in the theology of Vatican II concerning Church order had been part of the theological patrimony of the Church well before Martin Luther came on the scene. That may well be true but in no sense does this detract from the role of Luther in helping to shape current Catholic thought. The philosopher Plato discovered several centuries before Christ that when one is dealing with general ideas, dialogue helps them to become clear and precise. In Church order it is largely through wrestling with Luther's ideas that Catholic thinking has reached its present stage.